Vietnam’s authorities have busted an unauthorized online gambling ring they claim handled bets worth nearly $3b before the whip came down.

On Thursday, Vietnamese media reported that police in Hanoi had arrested 16 individuals accused of running an illegal online casino that had been in operation since 2018. Police, cooperating with the Ministry of Public Security’s high-tech crime unit, named the alleged ringleader as a 37-year-old named Truong Ngoc Tu.

The ring reportedly instructed what the police claimed was its ‘millions’ of customers to download a gambling app or sign up directly with their ‘No Hu’ (‘Break the Jar’) website, while a network of 24 ‘Level 1’ agents and hundreds of ‘Level 2’ agents were responsible for issuing ‘points’ cards in exchange for cash.

These points acted as online credits that allowed players to access the app/site’s casino games. Winnings would be paid in cash via the agents. The agents, who received 2% commission on each deposit they arranged, also allowed gamblers to put up non-cash assets such as motorcycles as collateral against online credits.

Nevada gambling regulators are keeping their April casino revenue numbers a secret, and not just because they’re the lowest total on record.

On Friday, the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) issued its casino gaming revenue report for the month of April, during which the state’s gaming venues were completely shut down to minimize further COVID-19 transmission. Which explains why revenue amounted to only $3,646,658 versus $936.4m in April 2019.

Obviously, April was a somewhat humiliating time for Nevada casino operators, who probably thought they’d seen the worst after their March revenue dipped 40% year-on-year to ‘only’ $618.1m. The casinos were ordered to shut their doors in mid-March by Gov. Steve Sisolak, who announced this week that the casinos were officially “on track” for a “phased reopening” on June 4.

With no land-based gaming going on, the NGCB’s April report is entirely based on online sports betting and online poker. But we have no idea how much of that $3.64m was betting and what was poker, because the NGCB blacked out all the data on its revenue sheet.

UK gambling revenue took a modest dip in the most recent UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) survey, as online growth failed to offset a double-digit decline in retail operations.

On Thursday, the UKGC released its latest regulated market statistics for the period spanning October 2018 to September 2019, during which overall revenue totaled £14.26b, a 0.5% decline from the most recent report spanning April 2018 to March 2019 (and down even further from £14.5b in the 12 months ending September 2018).

Online casino revenue claimed the largest share of the overall pie with £3.19b, up 3.9% and just topping National Lottery revenue of £3.184b (+3.4%). Online betting rose 4.3% to £2.12b, while online bingo jumped 12.5% to £198m.

Combined online gambling revenue (excluding online National Lottery sales) hit £5.51b, up from the £5.3b reported in the 12 months ending March 2019, reversing the rare negative growth (-0.6%) recorded in the previous survey.

Saipan casino operator Imperial Pacific International (IPI) is fooling itself if it thinks it can ignore the US government’s financial watchdog the same way the company ignores demands for payment by its former contractors.

That was the message conveyed to IPI on Thursday by Edward Deleon Guerrero, who was recently appointed the new chairman of the Commonwealth Casino Commission (CCC). Guerrero made the comments in response to a little-seen section of IPI’s 2019 annual report.

In that report, IPI noted that on March 4, it had received a letter from the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) saying the watchdog had detected “apparent violations of the BSA [Bank Secrecy Act] and its implementing regulations and it is considering whether to impose civil money penalty or take additional enforcement action against” the casino operator.

IPI stated that FinCEN conducted a BSA compliance probe in 2017 and the March 4 letter requested further information and documents dating from October 2016 – IPI had denied it was under FinCEN surveillance in November 2016 – to the present day. IPI’s annual report, which was released on April 27, said the company was “still in the process of preparing for the required information and documents.”

UK-listed gambling giant Flutter Entertainment says business is booming despite the lack of major betting sports, but that didn’t stop it from raising over £812m through a new share issue.

On Thursday, Flutter issued a trading statement covering April 1 through May 17. The enlarged company, which now includes the operations of The Stars Group (TSG), says revenue in Q2 to date is up 10% from the same period last year.

The gains were largely due to the predominantly grey/black market operations of TSG’s PokerStars brand, aka ‘TSG International’ under Flutter’s new brand integration strategy. TSG International revenue was up 92% year-on-year, while the combined Sportsbet/BetEasy online betting operations in Australia were up 56% and the US operations of TSG and FanDuel rose 61%.

Flutter’s UK- and European-facing operations were far less stellar, with Paddy Power Betfair brands down 54% (online down 41%, retail a complete write-off due to COVID-19 closures) and the online-only Sky Betting & Gaming falling 28%.

UK-listed gambling operator Playtech has dug into its wallet to demonstrate its remorse over the suicide of a young customer of its online gambling sites.

On Thursday, Playtech announced that it was boosting its donations to responsible gambling charities to £3.5m following Wednesday’s release of a UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) investigation into the suicide of a former customer of Playtech subsidiary PT Entertainment Services (PTES) and its B2C sites Titanbet.co.uk and Winner.co.uk.

The UKGC probe discovered that 25-year-old Chris Bruney took his own life in April 2017 following a five-day gambling spree in which he lost over £119k at PTES sites. During this period, PTES’ VIP managers sent Bruney numerous bonuses, including a final £500 bonus hours after Bruney was dead.

The UKGC slammed PTES for “serious systemic failings” in its social responsibility and anti-money laundering processes, as well as “more general failings” in its interactions with VIP customers. PTES cooperated with the UKGC’s probe but chose to relinquish its UK licenses for the Titanbet and Winner sites before the probe concluded.

He’s been mopping up results left, right and centre in the past few weeks online, and Max Silver has won another title to add to his collection in winning the Unibet Open Online for €77,321.

With Unibet being one of the first companies to move their live tour online, players who favour the green clover leaf have been enjoying the recent events on the site, and none more so than the Unibet Open, won in fine style by Max Silver.

Silver, who in his own words ‘had all the chips from 14 [people] left’, dominated the deciding stages and won heads-up against Jamie Nixon.

With a €1,100 buy-in, a total of 373 players took to the virtual felt, meaning that the guarantee of €200,000 was almost doubled in terms of the size of the prizepool, which ended up at a massive €392,750.

He’s been mopping up results left, right and centre in the past few weeks online, and Max Silver has won another title to add to his collection in winning the Unibet Open Online for €77,321.

With Unibet being one of the first companies to move their live tour online, players who favour the green clover leaf have been enjoying the recent events on the site, and none more so than the Unibet Open, won in fine style by Max Silver.

Silver, who in his own words ‘had all the chips from 14 [people] left’, dominated the deciding stages and won heads-up against Jamie Nixon.

With a €1,100 buy-in, a total of 373 players took to the virtual felt, meaning that the guarantee of €200,000 was almost doubled in terms of the size of the prizepool, which ended up at a massive €392,750.

It’s been around since 2003 and the most popular first-person shooter since shortly afterwards. Every year, on release date, legions of ‘CoD’ fans will take a day off and play Call of Duty from dawn until dusk.

The latest innovation for CoD fans is one that few will notice but without knowing it, many if not all players will appreciate the difference – Call of duty is partnering with TeamSpeak.

In what is initially a three-year partnership deal, Call of Duty’s new broadcast communications partner has arguably the biggest job of any since the game’s inception, namely keeping millions of CoD players speaking during a lockdown that has affected the entire world since the global pandemic of Coronavirus was announced.

While the deal, which runs until 2023 will primarily be enjoyed online, as soon as Call of duty comes back to live arena events, TeamSpeak will be ‘on comms’ throughout. From stadium announcements to in-game orders between squad-mates, TeamSpeak are the name behind the next three years of CoD voices.

Although the future of Manila’s COVID-19 situation appears to still be very much in doubt, City of Dreams (CoD) is betting on a soft re-opening in the near future. Local media reports the resort has started setting up free COVID-19 testing for employees, a necessary step for customer facing businesses as the Philippines begins to reopen its economy.

Testing booths have been set up inside the resort’s property, following standards put out by the Department of Health (DOH) standards. CoD will also be housing employees at nearby hotels and providing them shuttle services, removing them from the general population and reducing the probability that COVID-19 will infect them.

“The well-being of our colleagues is our paramount concern, moreso in these fragile times as we welcome them back to work. Doing the tests will help ensure not only their safety and good health, but also that of our guests,” said COO Kevin Benning.

The resort will also introduce a training program for all staff called “Play it Safe,” getting everyone up to speed on the strict protocols that will have to be followed to keep the resort clean, and visitors safe.

In the fast moving world of gambling, sometimes you might miss news that could be important to you. To make sure you’re all caught up on gaming industry news, be it online or brick and mortar, we’re rounding up the some of the announcements and partnerships from the last week that you might have missed.

Singular extends casino offering with Booming Games 

Singular and Booming Games have sealed a distribution agreement to target Tier 1 operators via Singular’s iGaming platform. Booming Games’ full slot portfolio is now available on Singular’s platform with more than 60 HTML5 slot games including popular titles like Booming Seven Deluxe, VIP Filthy Riches, Gold Vein and latest release Gunspinner. Booming Games release up to two new games per month. Soon to be released are Danger Zone, Show Master and Burning Classics. 

BtoBet closes agreement with Salsa Technology to expand casino content with Video Bingo portfolio